ZOINKS! You All Need To Read This Right Now. Like, For Really Real.

I AM OKAY.

Like.. SO okay.

I love you all. You are beautiful, incredible, fantastic people who care SO FREAKING MUCH ABOUT ME THAT IT IS OVERWHELMING IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE. I appreciate your concern with all of my heart and soul. BUT I AM OKAY. I am MORE than okay, actually.

I would first like to refer you to a post that I wrote on February 19th last year when I was going through a rough time and talking about some difficult things on here.

So now that you’ve definitely read it.
Apply what I said to right now.

I’m more happy/healthy/alive/confident than I’ve been in months. I’ve overcome a LOT of stuff during my time in Denmark, and I’m only just realizing how much. And today? Today, I am good. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to refuse to acknowledge things that are sad/difficult because if I don’t, will anyone?

The thing about being a reader of my blog is that you’re instantly a REALLY SPECIAL PERSON in my life, whether I actually know you or you’re just passing through, because you get a peek into this thing we can call my mind. Actually, probably even my soul. My writing is usually the most vulnerable, honest, and open part of myself.

Here’s a story:
I began writing poetry about my feelings during my freshman year of high school. I was fourteen and totally mixed up about typical fourteen year old things like, oh, I don’t know.. BOYS?! (yuck. I know, they’re smelly and they have cooties. especially at fourteen. but that was something I was able to overlook). Writing poetry was an outlet that I stumbled upon by chance, but it was the first place that I could really get my feelings out. It felt safer to write them then say them. And my inner introvert loved the fact that I was thinking about things before actually saying them. It helped me sort things out. And it still does. It took me a very long time – this blog went live January 2011 after having existed privately with a total of 3 readers with the link for a year – to share my poetry with more than a select handful of people whom I knew very well and trusted. And now I do on a day to day basis. But just because I’m sharing my mind with the world (holy SCARY, batman!) doesn’t mean that I’m going to censor what comes out of it. Do I post everything here? Nej. Nej, nej, nej (that’s “no” in Danish, beeteedubz. I’m so cultural, I know). There are some things you may never see (everyone loves a girl with a little mystery about her according to Lizzie McGuire or some equally amazing Disney Channel show ;)). But I do like to post things on here because I stand by the fact that I am not alone in what I think, and maybe someone will come across my thoughts and realize that they, too, are not alone. That I share their thoughts, their feelings.. Their hopes and fears. And that gives me the most happiness. Because WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA’AM – community forms. From a simple sliver of thought.

The post that I posted today was one that I wrote back in February of this year. It was a post that came out of some thinking that I had been doing (because I had way too much down time on my hands) about why I was having such a difficult time accepting that I was having such a difficult time (comprendo?). Because being here WAS difficult for me for a while. And that’s what surfaced in that moment for me.

A comment on brokenness, now.

There’s this band called Frou Frou that has a song called Let Go that is featured in a really sad scene in the movie Garden State, which Zach Braff stars in (and I totally have a flashbulb memory of the moment I saw that scene but I will spare you all). In the song, there’s one lyric that has always moved me more than the rest, “there’s beauty in the breakdown.” I really believe that’s true on so many levels. Breakdowns are so necessary. They keep us sane, they keep us balanced, they let us be totally and completely honest. They aren’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.

Deep down, we’re all broken in some way. And I think that makes us beautiful. Because it makes us so complex. It makes us worth knowing.

But being broken is far from a bad thing. It makes us real. It makes us human.

My friend Hannah (who literally brings sunshine with her wherever she goes, in case you were wondering) commented on my earlier post and made a point:

“The thing about the word ‘broken’ is it implies that it is ruined. Or that, even if it can be put back together, it will never look presentable. Like if you break a ceramic plate into a million little pieces and you glue every single one back together, no one would want to hang that plate on the wall. But did you know that when you put a piece of ceramic stone in the kiln, the heat automatically creates millions of litte cracks…that were meant to be there? So the stone ends up being cracked…but in a beautiful way. People end up paying thousands of dollars for what appears to be a cracked piece of stone. So maybe we’re just not broken, but just beautifully cracked. And that’s the way it was meant to be.”

My definition of broken definitely isn’t what she says the word “broken” implies, but I can totally see how it could be seen in that way.. and I don’t like that one bit. When I say broken, I think of beauty, because I think that the most real things are the most beautiful, and brokenness, to me, has always implied reality (hence my usual denouncement (SAT WORDS FOR THE WIN!) of wearing make-up in an attempt to make oneself more beautiful/hide one’s flaws; another story for another day). But Hannah has a point, and it’s one that I didn’t make clear.. A lot of this brokenness.. Is meant to be. And it’s so beautiful. Because these beautiful cracks are what make us who we are. They make our stories ours. They make us unique. And that’s totally scary to think. And maybe I’m completely wrong.

But whatever you take us for. Broken.. Beautifully cracked… Human… I stand by you.

And I thank you, ever so much, for reading my words, for being concerned, for being yourselves, and for being alive. If you’re reading this, you need to know that, even if I don’t know you personally, I still think that you’re so special and so vital to this world. I want you to keep on being who you are, keep on striving for what you want, and never forget just how important your story is. If you’ll try to do that, I promise I’ll try to do that, too :)